


Ariadne To Her Pasiphaë

by IShouldBeWriting



Category: My Medea - Vienna Teng (Song), TENG Vienna - Works
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Jukebox Fanworks Exchange, Literary References & Allusions, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:45:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4042753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IShouldBeWriting/pseuds/IShouldBeWriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Concepts of good and bad are irrelevant when you can only see one way out of the labyrinth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Selden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selden/gifts).



> The title references the myth of Theseus and the minotaur. Pasiphaë was King Mino's wife, mother to both the minotaur and Ariadne. It is Ariadne who provides Theseus with the thread he uses to find his way into and out of the labyrinth.
> 
> There is a followup to this fic in progress which might not be revealed by deadline but will be gifted to you and another recipient as soon as it is completed.

Night creeps into the apartment; it’s shadows growing long and grotesque. For the child, it is not the shadows that fill her nightmares but the madness that comes with them.

“Sweeeeeeee-tie!”

The sing-song voice is all the warning she needs. Hairs rise along her arms and she grabs what few things matter; a squeeze bottle of water, a tiny articulated toy rabbit, a thin tattered white blanket. 

“I’m so sorry, but she’s already gone to bed. Poor little thing was just so tired…” The voice is a kind one, but the child knows that her reprieve is nothing more than temporary.

“Awwww, I even brought home a slice of pie for her. And I met the funniest guy …” Noises. The refrigerator opening, thin metal clinking onto the shelf, the door closing once again.

“Well perhaps she’ll have it tomorrow,” the kind voice says, tone conciliatory, soothing. “Now why don’t we sit? You can tell me all about it.”

“He’s great! So fucking funny I almost pissed myself laughin’. And he left a huge tip! I’m gonna see him again, I just know it –” shrill with excitement, the voice mutes as it moves away, putting walls and distance between the child and itself.

Hearing her opportunity, the child slides out of bed, precious things clenched against her chest as she squirms beneath. She curls there, safe from the howling laughter. It’s just outside and it is waiting, but for now, she is safe.


	2. Chapter 2

“Stoooooopppppppp! She’s not going. Can’t and that’s that.”

The voice is brittle, crazed with cracks and weeds like the street outside, the street the child so desperately wants to see. 

It’s been days since she’s been allowed outside. Days since she’s seen sunlight, green, sky. The kindly one makes sure she gets to eat but every effort to remove her from the apartment is met with resistance, petulance, and at times outright anger. No one can change it; her mother’s mind. It’s fixed, broken like the leg of the tiny toy rabbit she’d gotten hold of during her most recent fit. 

Her mother isn’t right. The child knows this. But they are all each other have.

The door slams heavy in its finality. There will be no grass or sky today. But she’s lived without before, this child. Better to live without grass and sky than call down upon herself the storm that rages inside. The rabbit can survive being broken. The child knows that she cannot.

She makes herself as tiny as the toy still so beloved despite it’s broken state. She can hear the voice muttering, the footsteps beating an uneven tattoo across the length of the apartment as her mother searches.

Best not to be the thing she’s searching for.


	3. Chapter 3

“They’ll come if you’re not here. You have to stay, have to be here. They’ll find me, take me away and make it all ‘make sense’ again. But I know what sense is, I do. Their sense in’t nuthin’ but crazy talk. I’m the one …”

Her mother’s forearms are strong, clenched around the child’s ribcage in her terror. The child keeps her breathing shallow, sipping at air stale with sweat and the undertone of a month’s worth of refuse. She cards her slim fingers through the tangled mass of her mother’s hair. It’s not worth talking or trying to escape. It’ll get worse before the night is over. 

They’ve done this many times; the mother and child. The night comes and the world turns upside-down. The child becomes the mother and, clinging to her in terror, the mother becomes the child. 

Even though the curtains have been drawn and taped closed for days, on nights like this she can sense the coming of dawn. Her mother’s fingers begin to twitch and the tension in her upper arms eases momentarily as she slips free of this world to fly beside the retreating stars. 

Despite the knowing, the child does not acknowledge dawn’s imminence. She needs these last few moments’ stillness. Finally when her mother’s body exhausts its reserves and plummets into dreamless slumber, the real work will have to begin. She’ll clean up the wreckage. Sweep away the broken glass and tornado of shredded paper. Set to right the furniture heavier than herself.

Salvation is a matter of fractions, small victories. For the child on this day, salvation is the knowledge that it is only a matter of time. Soon they will both sleep soundly and long, her mother and she. For today, salvation is being able to sleep in her bed instead of beneath it.

But for now, she has work to do. She is tired. So very tired. But everything has to be put back in it’s place. Everything has to be just right before her mother wakes once again.


	4. Chapter 4

Though she tries to sleep in her own bed, it’s her mother’s arms where she finally finds rest. Despite everything else she might feel, her mother is hers. The child does not know any way to stop loving her. And when she thinks about it, she doesn’t want to stop. If the child stops feeling love for her, the mother becomes the stuff of nightmares, howling, clawing, sucking her dry to the marrow.

No. Love is better. When the refrigerator is empty she can still live on love. (That and the scraps snuck to her by the kindly one, who has so little herself that the giving can be seen as nothing but a kindness even if the meat is full of sinew and the bread lightly dusted with mold.)

The child’s hands feel empty without her treasures but she’s learned that it’s more important that they remain safe than within her grasp. There are so few things for her to love that her treasures, worn and broken as they are, must now be kept hidden lest they too become even more broken. She knows she could not survive that; the breaking of her treasures. 

Her mother is enough. Broken enough. Loving enough. Loved enough. So the child tucks herself tight between the back of the couch and the crook of her mother’s bent knees. Here the sweat smell is overpowering, but she can’t sleep without it. This is what home smells like.

The thought that home, that smell, might not be the best place for her, is an enormity too big for such a small child to fathom.


	5. Chapter 5

  
  


She’d never been on a boat, seen only pictures in the books her teacher read when she’d gone to school. But if she could have imagined what it would be like, this was it. The front (a prow, her teacher had called it) dips sharply downward, it’s angle perilously close to capsizing as it dives between the whitecaps. Just as she would cry out - fear large enough to overcome a lifetime’s silence – the boat swings round, it’s terrifying speed slowing as it’s nose points toward the sky.

Her body floats weightless for a scarce moment before the child begins to fall. 

She expects the feel of her back slamming into the waves, the frigid cold slicing through what thin clothes she has to rob the breath from her lungs as she submerged. But when it comes, the impact is on her side, a muted thud followed by a sharp shock as her head hits the floor.

The child blinks, her brain stuttering stupidly as she tries to separate herself from the nightmare that clings like sticky cobwebs. 

On the couch above, her mother still sleeps, head and limbs thrashing as the nightmare continues. But the child, she’s been thrown free, set loose from their shared dreaming to the safety of the waking world.

It was better this way, or so her mother swore on those rare lucid days. Lonely as the child was, better for her to live with the harsh realities of the life they shared than be trapped beneath the dark violence of her mother’s dreams. Though the loneliness makes her want to cry and yet she knows her mother is right; dreams such as these were never meant for the fragility of a child mind such as hers. Better to be ejected into wakefulness.

Besides, this gives her the rest of the time she needs. She’s sure she can scrounge something together. There was that can of cured meat the kindly one gave her a few weeks ago. And there was still a single slice of bread left, wasn’t there?

When her mother wakes, the child will be ready, waiting patiently with a warm meal to chase away the never ending pathways of dreaming’s cold darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

The only lights are the ones flashing blue. The child can see them through the thickness of the taped down curtains. Frightened, she crawls over and curls up tightly in her spot against the back of her mother’s knees. She knows they don’t have much time. She must draw it out, consume every moment she can. Because when they come, the police are going to take her away.

There is something wrong with her. She knows this now. Why else would this have happened? Her mother has given her everything. She has loved her, taken care of her, taught her right from wrong. There has to be something wrong with her. Why else would she ruin all the good things her mother’s hard work if there weren’t something wrong?

They come just like her mother said they would. Their lights are too bright, voices too loud. A small boat amidst the chaos, she cannot understand.

When they try to take her away, she knows what to do. She screams. Kicks. Bites. They cannot take her. Who will love her if they take her mother away? Where will she live? Who will teach her how to be in the world?

On the couch, her mother silently stares. Blood mingles with tears.

It was wrong, what she did. She knows that. But she didn’t have a choice. 

Suddenly tired, the knife drops from her hands.


End file.
